


the passing peace

by Raven (singlecrow)



Category: Fringe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-16 06:37:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why Olivia is a superhero.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the passing peace

**Author's Note:**

> Set during season 3.

For some reason best known to himself, Walter has bought old Green Lantern comics off eBay. They're strewn about, piled on the workbench next to the centrifuge, and Peter sometimes picks them up, chuckles at some familiar plotline, and puts them down again. Walter watches him, sometimes, with something indefinable in his expression, something that Olivia doesn't ask about. He's doing it now, looking oddly washed-out in the winter light from the lab windows. 

Peter drops the comic and doesn't notice either Walter or Olivia looking at him, picks up his leather gloves and announces he's going to buy doughnuts. The lab door closes behind him, and Walter's smiling now, at his adult son who doesn't have to ask whether to get frosted or strawberry. 

Astrid picks up the comic and flicks through it herself. "Never read these when I was a kid," she says, thoughtfully. "I liked _X-Men_."

Olivia laughs. "I liked Frances Hodgson Burnett. I totally wasn't a cool kid."

"You had your own superpowers," Astrid says, suddenly, without thinking, and then there's a small silence, the tension cut from it by familiar gentle mooing and Walter rummaging in a jar for peanut M'n'Ms. 

Olivia says, "I suppose I did" – and goes back to looking through files on her laptop, quiet research for this day that, so far, has no fringe event. 

Astrid drops her head and goes back to work. She's surprised a moment later when Olivia touches her arm and says, "You want to go for a walk?"

"Walter," Astrid begins, then stops. Walter's settled in for the day with a set of bubbling glassware that wouldn't have looked out of place as an illustration in anything Astrid read as a child. His face gleams, happy, through light reflected orange and green through the fizzing beakers. 

"Peter will be back soon," Olivia says. "Hey, Walter? Astrid and I are going out for a while, we'll have our cellphones. Peter will be back soon."

Walter mutters something about hydrogen cyanide. Olivia grins and fetches Astrid's coat for her.

*

In the crisp morning air, they cross Peter's footprints in the overnight snowfall and head towards Harvard Yard. "Olivia," Astrid says quickly, as soon as they're out of earshot of the lab, "I'm sorry if I. If I, you know, about you and superpowers…"

"Hey, no." Olivia's looking at her, all gentleness; for the hundredth time, Astrid thinks that she has a lovely smile. "You can say what you want to me, Astrid. And it's not like what you said wasn't true."

Astrid smiles back, goes on crunching through the snow, looking at the snowdrops and purple crocuses peeping out in the places where the ice is melting away. "Do you ever want to do something more with them?" she asks after a while. "Not moving through universes, exactly, but you know. Moving things around, setting things on fire."

"Sometimes." Olivia's looking thoughtful, her hands pushed deeply in her pockets as she walks. "Sometimes. But then I think, what then? Then I can move things around and set fire to things with my mind. Right now I can do that with my hands, and with matches. I don't know if the X-Men had exactly useful superpowers. How useful was it really, to, I don't know, create stormy weather and attract metal at a distance?"

"Thought you didn't read comics as a kid." Astrid's grinning.

"I may have seen the movies." Olivia's grinning right back.

"That's what I like, though," Astrid insists. "Professor X has superpowers, but he also has ideals, and Magneto's family are the reason he does what he does. It's more complicated than it seems at first."

"So's everything." Olivia's walking more slowly, now. "Family, right. My parents are dead. My family consists of my sister, my niece, you, a cow, and Peter and Walter Bishop. Do you know why Walter bought the Green Lanterns?"

Astrid shakes her head.

"They're different, over there. Peter liked them when he was young, and Walternate remembered that, even now. I told him that and now Walter's trying to show he hasn't forgotten it, either. Does that even make sense? Is that the kind of thing you know about anyone who isn't family?"

"I'm not sure." Astrid thinks about that. "It was Chinese New Year a couple of weeks ago," she says at last. "We went out back to watch the lanterns. Julia can always predict exactly when they're going to snag on a power line and catch on fire. That's her superpower."

She's remembering it as she says it, the lights drifting up into the sky like red and golden stars. Standing in the backyard, watching them, she felt something of herself fly upwards, too, and something lambent linger within her. 

Olivia is silent for a moment, thinking, thinking. "Your girlfriend," she says after a while. "You say that – you tell me that, in the FBI with your badge and your gun, and this." She waves a hand, takes in the beautiful old buildings and the snow-edged branches, indicating Cambridge and Boston and Walter's lab and this whole universe. "You say that and you believe you don't have superpowers?"

Astrid chuckles. "It's not like I'm in the military. And it's not like I never learned to fight back. It works for me."

Olivia raises her eyebrows.

"And you believe having a family doesn't give you power?" Astrid flashes back. "You don't, do you, Olivia?"

Olivia shakes her head. "I don't understand."

Astrid is thinking of Walter, and the kinds of fruit cereal he likes; of how it wasn't a lifetime of conning people but Olivia who taught Peter how to kill; how when Olivia came home, Astrid took her to buy sheets and pillowcases, new shirts and dishwasher soap. Of the red lights drifting up into the sky; of what Walter did, once, rather than lose his only child. She doesn't say anything. 

Olivia sighs, suddenly, kicking through the snow so it rises in a small flicker of spray, and when she looks up she's giving Astrid a shy smile. "No, I understand," she says. "I guess it's just not what I ever expected."

"No one expects cows," Astrid says, gently, and laughs. The weather's closing in, blurring the morning clarity. They're both stamping their feet, cracking the ice. They turn around.

*

In the lab, Peter is rubbing his hands together and blowing on them, fingers red with cold. "Some ring doughnuts," he reports, as Olivia and Astrid step in. The beakers are still bubbling; Walter seems to be just as they left him, although there's less candy in the jar. "Also jelly doughnuts. And ones with frosting."

"Thank you," Walter says, already peering into the box with delight written on his face. "All the different kinds!" 

_Sotto voce_ , Olivia murmurs, "There's more than one of everything."

Astrid giggles to herself, and clatters down the steps towards her computer.

"You know," Peter says, lightly, holding a comic as though he hasn't pulled together all the threads of what he's saying, "these aren't like I remember, from when I was a kid."

"I know, Peter," Walter says, with a sharp lucidity. Peter reaches into the box and gives him a doughnut, a hand landing on Walter's shoulder as he turns away. 

Astrid says, "Thanks for the doughnuts, Peter."

"No problem," he says, smiling at her, and from her side of the room Olivia looks down at them both, the briefest softness passing across her face.


End file.
